Drawing With Both Hands

AJ cracked a bone in her upper wrist a little over a week ago, falling off a log at a friend's house. Not a bad break, but enough of a tiny buckle in the bone that the doctor wanted her to wear a splint for the next 4 weeks to protect it while it was healing.

AJ's wrist is feeling OK, but she has been refusing to use her right arm or hand at all. Finally, last night after she had a complete meltdown because I asked her to leave the splint off for a little while after her bath to allow the skin to dry completely, I called in the big guns.

We called my friend the pediatrician, Dr. A. She talked to AJ on the phone and convinced her that she could leave the splint off for a little while to allow the skin to breathe while reading quietly in her bed. And, Dr. A encourage AJ to try to start using her arm and exercising her fingers even though she had a splint on the arm.

Today, we took some time to do some getting-ready-to-start school activities in preparation for next week. We talked about what subjects we would be covering and why they needed to know each thing, what we would be studying in U.S. History, and what kinds of activities we would be doing. Then we did some art practice--copy work from Drawing with Children.

AJ agreed to try the activity with her left hand, and did very well with it. That in itself was exciting because she's been so frustrated with the results of drawing or coloring with her non-dominant hand that most of the time she hasn't been wanting to try it.

Then M&M and I said that we would try it with our left hands if AJ would try doing it with her right hand. We had lots of laughs and groans as we all tried the copy work with our more difficult hand, but all of us finished the worksheet and had fun comparing our results. We wrote our names with both hands and compared those, too.

AJ did great, and I think gained a lot of confidence seeing that she could still use her right hand even with the splint on--and that the results were as good as or better than her left hand, but really quite legible with either hand.

I'm hoping that a few more activities like this over the next few days will give her the confidence she needs for schoolwork next week. I'll let her dictate some of the work she would normally have to write, but I do want her to continue using and exercising her arm. I'm glad today's experiment went so well.

Cute Kids

Mom: "Why are all the chairs and things clustered over on this side of the family room?"

AJ: "Well, we were gonna push Dad off the couch a couple of days ago. So we moved everything hard out of the way. We didn't want to kill Dad or anything."

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Ebee, in the car: "I don't hate the grinch! Cindy Lou Who said, 'I don't hate the grinch!'"

AJ: "She said, 'I nominate the grinch,' not 'I don't hate the grinch.' 'I nominate the grinch!'"

M&M: "What does nominate mean, anyway?"

AJ: "I don't know."

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AJ, to a friend, in response to something Ebee did or said: "Don't worry, she's just four. She'll grow out of it."

Busy summer

Well, I do still have at least one reader left despite my rare and sporadic postings. Thank you, dear Liz, for the prompt.

Hopefully now that the summer is almost over, I'll be able to start posting a bit more now that we'll be getting back into a regular routine.

Our summer has been quite full, with swimming lessons, family gatherings, continued work on decluttering, shopping for curriculum and planning the upcoming school year, church activities, dog training, a 5-day trip to the coast to celebrate our 10th anniversary (sans kids and pets), a rabbit show, and now the county fair.

If you're in the area and visit the fair, do look for my kids' posters in the rabbit barn. AJ's has a rainbow heading with the words "Rainbow Rabbits" and labeled photos (most of which she took herself) of various rabbit varieties. M&M's has the heading "What can I eat?" with a photo of Snowball, our dark-eyed white rabbit, and labeled pictures that she drew of various foods, with the ones rabbits aren't supposed to eat crossed out with a red circle and slash mark. Both are on blue poster board.

I'm still working on trying to pace myself and learn how to manage so that I can find the best balance of diet, rest and activity in order to avoid flare-ups and function well. I'm hoping a trip to the chiropractor this afternoon will be helpful in controlling pain levels.

NLASS the college student is still living with us, and I find that it helps immensely to be able to schedule in afternoon naps a couple of times a week while she keeps an eye on the kids, as well as the extra help with things like dinner preparation several times a week. DH and I have been able to go on dates almost every week, too, which is lovely.

I plan to make a post soon telling about the great (free!) American History curriculum we plan to use this year, and I owe Becca Sue a few posts on parenting issues.

I hope everyone is having a great summer!

Timez Attack--an amazing resource for mastering multiplication tables

AJ has been struggling with not seeing the need to learn math, and therefore not wanting to do math. So we've been looking for creative ways to teach math facts to her. One of the resources we've found is so unusual and great that it deserves special mention: an unusually well-made RPG adventure math game called Timez Attack.

I'm so impressed by this program that I signed up for their affiliate program--something I don't do lightly.

Timez Attack is a video game with unusually exciting play and graphics. It plays like an role playing adventure game, where you direct your character through a 3-dimensional world. In order to open doors and fight monsters, you have to know your times tables.

Better yet, the way the game is set up actually helps to teach the times tables in a very visual, logical way. For example, early in the game a door labeled 2 x 8 has a graphic of two groups of 8 next to it. Little creatures jump out of the wall, each of them worth 8 points toward getting the door open. The program keeps a running count of your total as you catch the animals and they turn into balls worth 8 points each . . . 8, 16. Then you have to throw the correct number of balls (each worth 8) at the door to open it.

Behind the door is a monster who has multiplication problems appear on his belly. You deal him blows by solving the math problems until you beat him. If you get too close to him or take too long to type in the correct answer, he deals you a blow, which damages your character.

The graphics and game play are reminiscent of a PlayStation, GameCube or Wii type of RPG game, but you play it directly on your computer (there are downloads for either Mac or PC).

My math hater is suddenly very enthusiastic about learning her times tables. She's even happy to watch someone else play the game, and help by shouting out the answers as the math problems appear.

The game is so exciting that even I enjoy playing it. I've even caught NLASS and her friends in their teens and twenties playing it.

Try the free version to learn tables 2-12. It's a fully functional version of the game, but doesn't have the variety of different worlds and creatures that the full version has.

If you decide to upgrade to the full version (you can earn a discount by telling a friend or buying the program at the same time as a friend), I would of course appreciate it if you do it through my affiliate link (any of the links on this post) which will give me a kickback of a portion of the sale for advertising: www.bigbrainz.com/index.php?PARTNER=purplekanga

P.S. Blog posts which are paid for by a sponsor or give me some sort of benefit such as an affiliate program will be tagged "sponsored" on my blog.